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Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.

A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.

If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.

I have long been convinced that my artistic ideal stands or falls with Germany. Only the Germany that we love and desire can help us achieve that ideal.

Europe in general is a great place for me, but specifically Germany has been very good to me. Germans love classical music... Electronic dance music is massive over there, so I'm kind of the marriage between the two.

I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.

The classical music world is so snobbish.

I think a great piece, whenever it was written, gets under our skin, makes us feel something. That's what Beethoven was trying to do.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.